Liverpool Biennial 2016
Wed Sep 13 2017
Co-curated by Bertolotti-Bailey F, Cairns S, Cooper R, Krysa J, Manacorda F, Malasauskas R, Tallant S, Willsdon D, Sandip P, Brannan P, Ying Tan Y.
The Biennial explored fictions, stories and histories, taking viewers on a series of voyages through time and space, drawing on Liverpool’s past, present and future.
These voyages took the form of six ‘episodes’: Ancient Greece, Chinatown, Children’s Episode, Software, Monuments from the Future and Flashback. They were sited in galleries, public spaces, unused buildings, and through live performance and online. Many of the artists made work for more than one episode, some works were repeated across different episodes, and some venues hosted more than one episode.
Software
Software is usually considered as something functional, such as programmes, instructions or rules that direct the computer to perform specific operations, but it can also open a portal to other dimensions and imagined worlds. This episode points towards a broader understanding of software beyond technical application to ideas of scores and choreographies, through which one thing affects another without practical outcome. These scripts, running through the Biennial, generate additional and unexpected content and behaviour, create parallel understandings of art and life, and expand and produce new social forms and possible worlds. The episode opens up perspectives and aesthetic experiences for ‘users’, activating multiple portals that offer the ability to leap from one world to another, from everyday reality to the ‘nethersphere’ of computation and abstraction.
Venues: FACT, Bluecoat, LJMU Exhibition Research Lab, Derby Square, Online
image: Ian Cheng, Emissary Forks at Perfection (detail), 2015. Courtesy of the artist, Standard Oslo and Pilar Corrias
